The image below is the one that I think of as the most perfect...
so much so that I had considered licensing the photo for editing and
use AS the cover. The photographer and model are friends and offered, but I
felt like the modern furniture/architecture was a bad fit.
Nevertheless, the pose, luminosity,
and exaggeration of the physique is spot on.

"Ox stood easily two and one third meters
tall and dense muscle wrapped his bones like tectonic armor. A
narrow strip of pale skin and trimmed hair framed his heavy privates....
His bulging arms were longer than Runt’s legs.
His broad back was a shifting wall of muscle over a high, square
ass. His flaccid penis hung like some kind of blunt trunk....
Brawny slabs of military-grade synthetic muscle covered his frame.
"

Ugly/adorable like a bulldog. His face makes him look like more
of a murderer than he actually is.

"He had
close-cropped tawny hair, bronzed skin, and a stubbled face that had
seen plenty of fights... His rugged face
was creased, but unscarred. And the heavy stubble pushing through
the square jaw was as dense as the whorls of hair over the heroic
pectorals and abdomen and legs..."

I'd love to pull off something a little Sci-Fi retro with the
cover... it's a style that's insanely sexy and yet NO gay romance titles
have availed themselves of the graphic reference. :) Obviously you
can tell by the Frazettas I've pulled here, for this little book I'm
drawn to the solitary figures, mostly nighttime or twilight, high
saturation... and mostly unclothed. Happy to discuss this idea
further if it would be helpful.

"The fifth week, Ox waded out to
the sandbar and strangled a four meter eel with his big bare hands.
His mighty body shone in the water like a statue… baby Heracles and
the serpents maybe, or Laocoön wrapped in dragons. Impossibly primal
and potent, the way advertisements tried to make men seem…

.

A spray of water and Ox popped to the surface
wrestling with a pissed-off male, it’s mandibles chewing the air.
These conger hybrids could weigh up to fifty kilos, but Ox lifted it
like a data cable in the churning water. He pulled it to the
shallows and got his feet under him, two predators knotted together."

32,000 word novella

a sci-fi gay romance about building worlds, budding trust, and lovers that
literally cannot fit together.

Marooned alone on planetoid HD10307-E,
colonist-farmer Runt
has been terraforming for the HardCell Corporation for the past
18 months in the middle of an alien ocean. When an overdue crate of provisions crashes on his beach,
he's hoping to find his new clonewife with the cargo.

Instead his employers have sent Ox, a
mute hulk who seems more like an executive assassin than a
simple farmer. Shackwacky and near-starving, Runt has no choice
but to work with his giant partner despite their unsettling
differences and mounting paranoia… and pray that he hasn’t arrived with murder in
mind.

At first, Ox and Runt
misjudge each other. As they learn to work together and rescue
their farm from ruin, their tentative friendship climbs toward
something more intimate and dangerous. But Runt’s fears and Ox’s
brutal past collide in a moment of deadly peril that puts
everything they have in danger or risk a violent retirement.

Between murderous roots and the seed of a
relationship, Runt’s fears and Ox’s brutal past collide in a place on the edge of the galaxy where hope
might have room to grow.

Runt had been semi-starving for three
weeks when he returned to his habitat and found the huge cargo
container in a shallow crater in the sand.

Hallelujah!

He might have missed it till morning,
but coming back from the eelbeds he spotted one bold crab
scuttling toward the water dragging a shiny mealpak in one claw,
trying to cadge dinner. Runt gave a whoop of relief and rescued
the food from the startled, spiny thief.

Without even rinsing off the day’s
grit, Runt popped the recovered mealpak open and sucked the
nutrient paste like a scavenger. Wasn’t like anyone could see
him out here except the eels offshore and the insects sleeping
in the palm trees. He turned to jog up the beach in search of
the fresh provisions.

Runt’s habitat sat tucked under a
steep rock wall in view of the cove that provided some
windbreak; the cargo had been dumped about 12 meters away in the
hot sand. The long crater around the container indicated the
drop-ship hadn’t even slowed as it passed.

“Thank you!” His shout at the empty
sky echoed off the pumice cliff. Knobjobs.

The container itself had split at one
corner but the contents remained intact thanks to the
impact-foam. Runt had gone hungry too many weeks to complain. If
he couldn’t get this bitch open any other way, he’d hack in with
the submachete.

Food. Real food and gear.
Runt almost passed out in relief.

At least he’d brought an industrial
weapon with him. He stabbed the sand with the submachete and
left the blade there, freeing his hands to dig out the treasure
buried inside this overdue shipment. And her?

On the undamaged end, Runt bent over
the keypad. With a calloused finger, he tapped in his farm code—Hisssss—
A meter-long side panel sighed open on the container’s side and
fell into the hot sand.

I wonder what she looks like.

Dispatch had wedged mealpaks and
canisters and paraphernalia into every centimeter and braced
them in impact-foam for interstellar transport.

Hands shaking, Runt dug his fingers
into the dense padding and peeled off a thick strip. Reaching
into the dark container, he grabbed a handle and hefted out a
tank of phytoplankton.

I’m saved. She saved me.

HardCell, the conglomerate that owned
Runt’s contract, had marooned him here in the middle of an alien
ocean a year and a bit ago, long enough that his bare feet had
leather soles, andhis skin didn’t burn anymore. His
bosses had shipped him to terraform remote planetoid HD10307-E
almost as soon as they’d extracted their seismologists and
genetic engineers. They’d altered its orbit to increase
daylight, melted its ice into freshwater oceans, and dumped a
few patented life forms into them to fight and fuck.

Like the ads blared: HardCell
means business!

At a meter and a half high, the
container stood almost as high as he did and so jam-packed Runt
hauled out a few crates to gauge the contents. Atop a barrel of
acid, a folded smart-net sat ready for action. Throw that in the
ocean and it would go find dinner for him! His logical brain
knew that this big delivery seemed oddly softhearted for
HardCell, but he ignored it.

He tunneled back through padding and
packages with hope in his heart. His stomach hummed
pleasantly around the rich meal after being empty so long, but
food wasn’t what he was looking for.

C’mon, cmon! Where is she?!

Dispatch always tossed in a few
pretend-we-give-a-shit extras: candy and dice and lubricant,
shiny gewgaws to keep the terraformers from getting shackwacky.

Runt saw something glowing faintly
and gave a bark of relief, wrenching fistfuls of transport foam
free to expose a tray of specimen tubes that just might save his
ass.

Bee-Moths! The redesigned
bee-moths.

His heart hammered. These little
beauties had made it all the way to this crappy system in
Andromeda from the corporate labs. HardCell’s biodesigners
spliced moths with bumblebee DNA to groom and pollinate
vegetation, but rarely replaced them. Freed of the packing and
woken by the tropical warmth, striped caterpillars glowed pale
lavender in the shadows of the container. His crops would be
saved in time!

As if handling lace coral, Runt
extracted the tube trays in slow motion and set them in the
shade until he could take them to the hive for hatching by the
digital queen.

He knew it was foolish, but the fresh
moths planted hope in him. Again he tunneled into the provisions
looking for the woman and found more mealpaks, food tanks.

He shook his head in wonder. All this
had to be a mistake at the depot. Schmuck’s luck.
At least he wouldn’t starve this season.

Runt peeled away the cushion of
impact-foam that had cradled the phosphorescent grubs and a tub
of biotic lotion. Beneath he found a bigger surprise from
Dispatch: a lumpy four-meter roll of mirror-bright flex-canvas
to wrap his habitat against tsunami and scavengers.

Runt unzipped it a few centimeters to
see. Sure enough! The dense material lay folded and stashed
inside packaging which resembled an oversized life-support sack.

Hope made him stupid. He should
have unpacked and unrolled it first thing, but in his eagerness
he skipped it. All this bounty convinced him his bride was
inside.

Maybe someone loves me. Maybe this
is a dowry.

Runt’s farmstead covered a small
patch of a hundred-acre igneous landmass that looked like a disk
with a wide bite taken out of it. Almost a month ago a storm had
ravaged the island’s little cove and he still hadn’t finished
repairing the devastation. A fuck-awful night, that: ground
lightning striking the curdled sky and his plasticrete walls
split in two places.

Worst of all, the sky had thrown the
bolt of charged ions back at the island obliterating Runt’s
little cocoon-shed with an answering crack; for two nights after
the tempest, thousands of bright scraps drifted on the tide as
the scattered moths tried and failed to fight their way back to
their farm. The air had smelled like burnt ozone for a week.

Some genius goofs, grunts pay the
price. Business as usual.

Once HardCellfinished
sculpting the climate, the storms would cease and the planetoid
would stabilize like every corporate combine: islands of fertile
dirt and brackish oceans, perfect for eel-ranching and
irrigation. In the meantime, Runt had patched his habitat best
he could. Losing the moths had ruined his meager harvest and
he’d started rationing to be safe.

Then this loaded container: twelve
cubic meters of salvation. With his shitty harvest stats? He
should feel grateful. He cleared a path through the supplies to
the back of the container and his stomach growled louder.

Dispatch had sent the upgraded
bee-moths and the habitat canvas and twice the food.

A few of his requests were missing
like always, but he’d gotten his essentials and more: eight
crates of spirulina pellets, six barrels of desiccated vegetable
cubes, clean worksuits, a case of bright pink Soyshimi, fresh
medkits, new tools, two pairs of sea boots twice his size, even
some fresh holo-porn from the company’s sex resorts.

Thank fuck.

HardCell hadn’t supplied this much
when they hired him. He logged the contents quickly as he
shuttled packages onto the warm sand.

That silvery weatherproofing for his
habitat would change his life. He had requested it after the
tsunami and given up hope; some pinhead engineer had finally
approved it. With luck this one would be flexible and reflective
enough to cover the entire habitat against the blinding double
daylight and drop the temperature inside by thirty degrees.

Still no wife. Yet.

His stomach growled at the nearness
of all those nutrients. For the first time in his life, saliva
pooled in his mouth at the thought of the “savory” mealpak
paste. Hunched inside the cool darkness of the transport
container, he sat on the bag of architectural fabric and
devoured another two mealpaks, forcing himself to go slowly.

With a beggar’s wisdom, he chose
textures and entrees he loathed (curry and pickled tongue) to
save the good stuff. His taste buds exploded. In seconds,
he had new favorite cuisines and let himself lick the wrapper to
get at every millimeter of them.

Now sated, Runt climbed out and
shuffled the supplies into piles: edibles for his habitat
cook-space and the meds, new blades and lotion for the
wash-space and auto-privy. Hammergun and seed to the greenhouse,
pipe and plasticrete and cubes of krill to the shed, the stasis
canisters of eel pups to the brood tanks. He plucked the massive
supply container clean, not wanting to waste anything Dispatch
might have sent to help him not die out here. Even the packing
would prove useful.

Terraforming was lonely bloody work,
but at the end of a seven-year tour he’d own a stake in the farm
he’d build here on the edge of nowhere and have the right to
vote as a HardCell shareholder. Runt knew he was stubborn and
stupid enough to take himself hostage if it meant a shot at
corporate citizenship and comfort.

They were building paradise. He was.

Finally, the orbit and rotation of
the planetoid had settled on something like Old Earth calendar
and clock. What’s more, the manmade climate was tuned to
tropical paradise and the sea had cooled to an endless rolling
pound the temperature of arterial blood.

What Runt really needed was his new
clone bride. Odd’s Gods! Eighteen months of masturbation
doesn’t breed too many brats to help at harvest.

Assigned mates were one of the only
perks of terraforming. Runt knew he was too small and too rough
to court a civilized bride, but he knew he’d be able to charm
whatever fertile female they cooked up for him, no matter how
ugly or ill-tempered. Clone spouses were engineered for
compatibility.

No wife yet.
Still, the lavish provisions eased his let-down.

Facing the broiling suns on the
horizon, Runt cracked his neck and decided to store the crates
of food first. Thankfully the past year had packed so much sinew
onto his compact frame that he could manage alone. It was
grunting, sweaty work, even in the twilight.

This was three times the produce the
transport pricks had dropped last time. Odd. He’d almost
starved last season. As he hauled a hundred kilos of mealpaks
and food tanks into the habitat cook-space, his gratitude and
hunger made the chore seem like a treat, even working solo.

HardCell always placed cofarmers in
mated pairs for safety and entertainment, but Runt’s original
partner had died on entry. She had vaporized inside the cheap
delivery pods used by space freighters for dropping nonsentient
cargo. Some blind date, huh? From lifemate to hot dust
before he’d even laid eyes on her. Just his fucking luck. And
just hers, apparently.

Trouble was, no replacement wife (or
explanation) had arrived. Runt hadn’t seen another
sentient being in months. There were terraformers posted on
other islands of course, but in a year and a half he’d not met
one.

The geologists had scattered
landmasses carefully across these roiling seas; HardCell
Corporation discouraged any kind of contact or conversation that
might lead to discontent or unionization. Planetoid HD10307-E
was to be an agricultural combine harvesting high-yield produce
and protein that would feed HardCell employees as far away as
Algol.

Runt vibrated with bone-deep relief
at seeing his shelves full of nutrients again. Several trips
cleared the food from the beach, then he tackled the gear,
chewing dry tofu-bacon.

Until he rebuilt the hive, the tubes
of shimmering caterpillars went in his sleep-space, the only one
that hadn’t sustained storm damage. He’d have to rig a new
hatchery first. Until then, best to be cautious.

It took him an hour to sort and snack
until his belly was full, the sand clear, and the transport
container scooped clean.

Nearby, the creamy heap of foam
shreds shrank as wildlife swiped it to line nests. By morning it
would be gone. Frankly, Runt appreciated the cleanup and the
biodegradable padding would only help the island’s ecosystem.

Then, only the architectural tarp
remained inside the container, probably three meters long across
its floor. Runt grabbed the handle at one end of the sack and
dragged the dense silvery roll onto the sand.

Chance’s pants it was heavy! Too
heavy this late in the day.

The smaller sun was coming down and
night bugs were chittering in the brush. He decided to leave the
fabric for daylight so he could check it for parasites… If rats
or millipedes had hidden in its folds, he didn’t want them
catching him barehanded.

Runt almost turned towards the
habitat when the huge bundle jerked and curled like a monstrous
metallic worm.

“Fuck!”

Runt’s shout lifted a few surviving
moths fluttering from the bluish palm trees. He fell to the
ground and scrabbled back on his ass toward the heavy-duty
submachete still planted in the sand. Noisy, but the only
accessible weapon.

The resurfacing tarp moved again, a
wriggle all along its length, something packed alongside the
fabric.

Alive.

Something alive stuffed inside the
sack.

What the hell could be that big?

Hogs, dogs, humans….

I’m dead.

Too big to be her. A cofarmer couple
probably, sent to kill him and confiscate his farmstead and his
stock options. Could he retire both of them?

His recruiter had warned him that if
he didn’t meet their terraform schedule that forcible
termination was likely. Fuck. His numbers were shit and
he was behind schedule. Becoming a HardCell shareholder took
more than work. Runt’s chances had been fucked from day one.

I’m a dead man.

Runt realized HardCell had sent a new
pair of terraformers stashed in foam to retire and replace him.
Duh. Runt was undersized and had been trapped working
solo.

HardCell means business.

After eighteen months, they’d finally
sent his retirement plan in a corporate Trojan Horse, the
cracked container packed with terraformer nibbles and he’d
fallen for it like a hungry idiot.

All that’s their food.

Legs braced to pounce, Runt circled
the enormous squirming life-support duffel with the whirring
submachete. He could see a few limbs inside straining hard at
the closure.

The reflective packaging moved again
and one of its occupants gave a bass groan. With a tearing
sound, the flex-wrap split and one gigantic hairy arm clawed at
the sand a moment, as one assassin struggled free from the life
support sack and the silvered fabric.

A man, large enough to be two people,
but no mate.

Because he’s too oversized to share a stasis sleeve.

Huge. Naked. Drugged. Alone.

Runt goggled in confusion as the
enormous body squirmed out of the shiny canvas like a colossal
larva to flop on the sand and gulp the briny air.

I sat on him. I ate sitting on my executioner.

Runt circled nearer, submachete by
his side with the safety off. He only had one chance and this
was it.

He took a step. He took another one.

Still shivering from the drugs and
the bruising impact, the strapping stranger didn’t react. He
twitched and curled in the sand. Cramps and dehydration wracked
his frame.

Runt lowered the mechanical blade but
held it close. Had they sent an ex-con to steal his claim?
Fuck, he’s huge. Was he human? Why didn’t he say anything? Runt took
another wary step.

He’s a fucking mutant.

The stranger unfolded his limbs and
rolled onto his side. His bulging arms were longer than Runt’s
legs. His broad back was a shifting wall of muscle over a high,
square ass. His flaccid penis hung like some kind of blunt
trunk. Even out here under the sky, the mighty physique took up
so much space.

Runt had about a 30 second window as
the transport tranquilizers wore off. If he was going to kill
his replacement this was the only moment. The submachete whirred
softly in Runt’s calloused hand a few inches above the sand as
he crept.

Closer... closer.

Runt’s mouth hardened into a scowl
under his salt-stiff mustache. If he slaughtered this circus
clone now he could claim the goon had died on entry like his
long-lost wife.

Do it.

The groggy giant gasped and spat,
then rolled onto all fours, his head hanging. He shuddered and
drool ran from his mouth.

He’s a killer.

He had close-cropped tawny hair,
bronzed skin, and a stubbled face that had seen plenty of
fights. Brawny slabs of military-grade synthetic muscle covered
his frame. Upgraded for combat or security to superhuman
dimensions. Maybe not a full clone, but growth hormones out the
wazoo, obviously. The broad paw spread on the ground had a palm
bigger than Runt’s entire face.

Don’t look at him.

Runt’s eyes scanned for the sweet
spots: throat, kidney, groin. He raised the humming submachete,
his hand sweaty on the gel grip. He glanced up at the habitat,
his crop terraces, the little kingdom he’d built by himself for
eighteen months a millimeter at a time.

Retire him now.

Suddenly, the troll turned his head
and looked right into Runt’s eyes and simply smiled in relief…
as if greeting an old friend, as if he didn’t see or fear the
buzzing blade at all, as if Runt had saved his life. A small
smile… no triumph, no cruelty, a faint hopeful curve of
childlike pleasure which extinguished Runt’s murderous thoughts.
The big dumb freak was happy to be naked and kneeling at a
smaller man’s feet like a stray cub, puking on the sand at the
ass-end of the universe.